A Catalog of Burnt ­Objects

Gr 10 Up–Seventeen-year-old Caprice Alexander has her life planned: design an app to attract tourists to her small California town (providing scholarship opportunities), attend college, and navigate her relationship with an estranged brother who is fighting an alcohol addiction. The story opens eight weeks before a large fire, with each chapter featuring letters from townspeople on burnt objects. The chapters following the fire focus on the Alexander family’s attempts to cope with its aftermath. This is a tale of painful experiences and finding the good. An app for tourists becomes a place for locals to share memories, a town destroyed will be rebuilt, and families emerge stronger despite loss, with relationships begun and growing. Youngdahl attempts to take on numerous heavy and relevant topics. However, there isn’t space to adequately address alcohol addiction, domestic violence, racism, anxiety, PTSD, wildfires, condom use, and death in a manner that is even-handed and coherent. Unfortunately, most of these essential topics receive a few sentences. There is an attempt at humor, but a hot-to-trot grandma interested in Caprice’s high school boyfriend is off-putting.